Orpheus and the Pursuit of Immortality Through Divinity

Faced by the problem of the dual constitution of man, his soul Dionysian, divine and immortal, and his body Titanic, evil and mortal, Orphism found the solution of the antimony in two very different directions. On the one hand there was the prospect of a natural process of purification through a series of physical rebirths in animal or human form. On the other hand there was a way of salvation provided by the Orphic cult itself, an extended process of self-discipline ending in a spiritual regeneration that would break, once for all, the chain of successive physical births, allowing the final goal of ultimate assimilation to deity to be attained. Thus the initiated, having lived a life of Orphic purity, finally became "God from man"